Scott's Journal

My girlfriend and I were talking tonight as she marathoned her way through season 2 of Hannibal. I tried to get into Hannibal a couple years ago and I found myself pretty disinterested, so I had no problem listening to her as she was going over some talking points.“Oh my God,” she said, “There’s literally a character on this show that drinks orphan tears.”“Let me guess,” I replied, “I’m gonna say…congressman?”“Abusive heir to the largest pork producer in America.”“Yeah, that sounds about right.”It took until Hannibal (and to some extent my own watching of ABC’s Quantico) for me to realize the funny thing about TV psychopaths: Like 70% of America’s social elite are horrible, horrible people.

If you’ve listened to episode 001 of the Title Hunt podcast you’ll know that Dolph Ziggler is my boy. He’s my guy. I want him to succeed, I want all the belts on him, I want him to be the next Shawn Michaels. I wish him every wonderful thing in the world. This might lead you to believe that Dolph Ziggler is my favorite wrestler.You would be wrong. My favorite wrestler is Bill Goldberg.Not a lot of people who follow wrestling as close as I do would agree with me. Bill was never the greatest worker, he was a little sloppy and a little dangerous and his mic work was always a little below the average, and certainly below fellow WCW alumni like Chris Jericho, Sting, and others.But when Goldberg returned to the ring on WWE Raw this past Monday he brought up a very interesting point. He said that one of the things that he missed the most about working in wrestling was that he no longer got the opportunity to be a superhero for the kids. He said that there’s “not enough of us” anymore.And you can talk all day about the number of 5-star matches that AJ Styles has put on, or the work rate Dolph Ziggler has, or how Finn Balor started Bullet Club in Japan and they’re the best thing since the nWo. You can talk about Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson and how they’re the most devastating tag team in history. Tell me all about Jay Lethal and his recent Ring of Honor title run. Tell me all about the strange wizardry Zack Sabre Jr. can pull off every time he gets between the ropes. It does not matter.Nobody will ever be better than the person you believed in when you were seven.

Hello again! As you might recall, last week I wrote about the state of WWE Raw’s championships. Because that article received such a nice response (and because I said I would) this week we’re going to cover the championship scene on SmackDown Live, fresh off the heels of Sunday’s No Mercy pay-per-view. So, let’s get right into it, shall we?

The WWE World ChampionshipCurrently Held By: AJ StylesIt Ought to Be: AJ StylesStarting out on a pleasant note, the WWE’s flagship title is exactly where it needs to be. The Triple Threat match at No Mercy was all but decided even before the event began—AJ has only held the title for about a month, which is trivially short by WWE’s standards—but it’s still nice to see that he has the belt at all. As dedicated fans of the show might tell you, it was a bit of an odd series of circumstances that led us to the position where we could use the phrase “WWE World Champion AJ Styles.”

Some of you will be happy to note that if you have no interest in the world of the WWE then you can skip this article. But if that sounds like the kind of thing that might tickle your fancy, I encourage you to read on.

WWE’s No Mercy event will be airing live this Sunday on the WWE Network and through various pay-per-view means. More importantly though, as of this Tuesday, October 4th, we’ve officially hit twelve weeks, three months, since the WWE’s brand extension draft which gave us separate rosters for each of the company’s weekly shows. Given that we’ve reached arguably the first major time milestone following the brand extension draft I thought it might be nice to take stock of where we were, where we are, and where it appears we might be going in regards to each title. With that said, let’s get started. Also! Since the WWE’s various shows are technically fictional network television, here is your spoiler warning. Okay.